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About NUI Galway

Since 1845, NUI Galway has been sharing the highest quality teaching and research with Ireland and the world. Find out what makes our University so special – from our distinguished history to the latest news and campus developments.

Biography:

Dr Michael Cairns was awarded his B.Sc. (Hons) in
Biochemistry at the University of Bristol in 1981. At the Royal Free Hospital
of Medicine (University of London) in the laboratory of Prof Stephen Baldwin he
carried out his Ph.D. studies on a protein chemistry approach to the
elucidation of the structure of the human erythrocyte glucose transport protein.
After being awarded his Ph.D. in 1987 he moved to the University of Cambridge
where he continued his studies on sugar transport proteins under Prof Peter
Henderson. Here he developed expertise in DNA technology, cloning and gene
expression studies while studying the bacterial sugar/H+ symport
proteins. In 1991, still in Cambridge but now at the MRC Centre, he spent a
year under Nobel Laureate Prof Sydney Brenner designing vectors to monitor
protein-protein interactions. A lectureship followed in 1992 at the Queen’s
University of Belfast. In the Dept. of Oncology he set up his own research
group focused on gene expression in ovarian cancer. Since 1998 Dr Cairns has
been at NUI Galway initially in the National Diagnostics Centre and currently
in the Glycoscience Group. He was Team Leader of the Molecular Biology Group for 10 years in the National Diagnostics Centre and has been a Senior Research Fellow in the Glycoscience Group under Prof. Lokesh Joshi.

He has 47 refereed publications to his name, he has
supervised 13 PhD students and has been awarded funding from the EU (FP5 &
FP6), DAFM, Enterprise Ireland and the HEA. Since 1992 the main focus of his
studies has been differential gene expression - how gene expression changes in
response to a stimulus, be it a physiological change (sexual maturation in
fish, hormonal challenge to smooth muscle cells), a stress challenge
(confinement in fish) or a pathogen challenge (Helicobacter infection of the
human gastrointestinal tract). Differential Display, Suppression Subtractive
Hybridisation and Transcriptomics/Microarrays Analysis have been the main
techniques employed. Currently his main interest is in the expression of genes
that affect the glycosylated status of glycoproteins and glycolipids and how
this relates to cell-cell interactions in bacterial adhesion to and invasion of
host cells.